Why Are We Anxious? (Part 1/6)

Why are we anxious? What is it? Where does it come from? How do we make it go away? We don’t. But I am getting ahead of myself. First, we need to know what it is and what it feels like.

The symptoms of anxiety are basically controlled by the brainstem and some ancient parts of the feeling/limbic system—primitive survival functions: shortness of breath, (“I can’t catch my breath.”), needing to urinate, feeling crushed, pressure on the chest, butterflies in the stomach, cramps, palpitations, the inability to sit still, problems with digestion, a feeling of being scattered and unfocused, loss of concentration and, above all, feelings of doom and gloom—death is approaching. Associated with that feeling is a deep sense of being helpless and hopeless. In addition, there is the constant feeling, “am I going to make it?” That is the precise fear felt physiologically during the birth process where the successful ending was not at all sure. The substrate may be, “I won’t make it,” which shows up at the end of semester final exam in the body of the person as a pure anxiety state. It is anxiety because resonance from the final exam has set off the early terror where making it was problematic. And what it set off is clearly deeply unconscious and so defies conscious/awareness. It set off the real feeling of desperation and hopelessness because not making it meant death; never articulated but felt from experience. The articulation is in the anxiety. And the body now expresses precisely.

We might include in this is the horrible fear of failure. Because taking a final exam set off the anxiety over failing when failing meant possible death. Again, no one has articulated this but the body in its great wisdom has in its own way. Anxiety is a survival mechanism that alerts us, galvanizes us into action to avoid death. The problem is the inability to come off this vigilant state. I want to reiterate this point: anxiety is not just a pesky feeling that needs to be eliminated; it needs to be embraced as a warning signal to save our lives.

This is what I call “first-line.” The inability to concentrate comes from massive pain input from below. It disrupts the normal functioning of the neo-cortex. And all this is logical since death was approaching in the original event. It could be a carrying mother terribly anxious and agitated, a mother who takes drugs, who does not eat enough or properly, and who is just miserable, for any number of reasons. The brain researcher J.K.S Anand, found that when a needle was inserted into the mother’s abdomen (amniocentesis) the fetus attempted to escape it; grimacing, turning his head, while the secretions of in-built anti-pain chemicals skyrocketed. The fetus was not anxious, he was terrified. When he grows up and is far from the memory it will be called anxiety. Still the same terror that the salamander in us is carrying around.

Why the feelings of doom and gloom? Because it was a logical reaction to menacing events. Doom was in the offing, in the same way that a massive dose of anesthesia given to the mother during birth, largely shuts down the baby’s system and is experienced as doom. In the memory the menace is still active and present; we cannot shake it loose because it is now imprinted into the neurophysiology. Once we get to that memory and experience the entire circumstances and feelings involved we can finally relax and feel comfortable.

Take for example the feeling of anxiety suffered by one of my patients at the Department of Motor Vehicles. She went to get a new license. As soon as she arrived the obstacles began; long lines where she had to wait; she needed to fill out this form, needed proof of this or that. It was interminable. It all piled up and she became anxious and feeling agitated with no way to stop the feeling. In the afternoon session she felt the helplessness behind it all, and relived that helpless feeling at birth when no matter what she did she could not get out. She could not be in anyone else’s hands and could not trust anyone with her feelings. For her death was menacing, and anxiety began. Any serious helpless feeling dipped into the original one where it was a matter of life-and-death. This patient was far enough along in her therapy to have deep access; not always the case. Waiting (to get out) bothers many of my patients because of the resonance factor where that primordial waiting could have spelled doom.

One of my pre-psychotics was in the waiting room bar waiting for his restaurant table. He kept being put off by the concierge. He exploded and started to break the dishes hung on the wall. His pain was right up to the surface (which made him pre-psychotic). It wasn’t like he was waiting to get born back then; it (the feeling/sensation) was absolutely here and now. He was desperate and he never knew why—until he felt. And needless to say, no one put any ideas about all this into his head. But we watched during the reliving as he gagged and turned red, obviously losing breath rapidly.

Those early reactions were not irrational or neurotic. Who gets anxious when they have to fill out long forms? They were proper at the time but continued on because the sensations and feelings associated with the early event are now imprinted and dog us forever. It is only the context that has changed; once we plug into the imprinted memory it all makes sense. When we do not consider the imprint it seems terribly neurotic. We don’t just have those feelings mentioned above as a sort of caprice; we don’t manufacture them out of some whim. They should be there. It is our job to find out why. The feeling when about to take a test is explained by a patient, “I am not prepared to present a paper. I know I won’t make it.” He said he felt like a “wreck.” His wife called him a mess.
Anxiety means that the lower brain is at work, the brain we have in common with the salamander; and indeed, the salamander brain is almost intact in the lower reaches of our brain. We do have a reptile inside our head that does what reptiles do. It still reacts like it use to when it was inside the animal brain. That brain has remained largely unchanged through millions of years. It reacts immediately, often without reflection, and prepares us for the onslaught of incoming events (both external, and more importantly, internal). Those internal events are feelings that seem alien to us and which we attempt to repress at all times. When we cannot, we become anxious; the harbinger of strange feelings approaching consciousness. The reptilian brain is largely tamed or mollified by the later developing brains. But once we remove the newly evolved brain caps (as we do in the psychologic sense) we see it largely intact as it once was. We can see the reptile inside. We observe as they make the primordial “S” movements during a reliving of birth, something the patient cannot duplicate once out of the feeling.

Why does that sound strange, the salamander rummaging around in our heads? No more strange than the fact that ancient flippers became our hands and arms. We carry around vestiges of our ancient past in most of our organs. Rats have brains and kidneys too; and it turns out that their genes are not that different from ours and are almost as plentiful.

The impulsive neurotics, rapist, killers, acting-out impulsives, usually have a great deal of what I call first-line trauma and pain. (Discussed in a moment). Their neo-cortex was never properly developed and there is a great deal of damage (impairment) to the lower brain; that damage leaves a residue of impulses that are barely contained. So are they human? They are basically primitive animals, deficient in neural tissue for control; lizards with an add-on. Others may have impairment to their feeling brain; this would occur after the first few months of life on earth and will determine how they relate to others, or whether a person can relate to others. I would call this, limbically impaired. I often think of it as a “missing feeling band.”
But it is rarely one or the other. Damage in the womb will later affect so many of our functions: the brain, the visceral system, organ systems and vital functions. The goal is to have our human brain meet up first with the chimp brain and then the lizard brain so that they can be intimate, know each other and communicate well among them. When they do we are normal. And we are conscious because all three levels interact fluidly. That is what consciousness means.